Henri Nannen

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Henri Nannen (25 December 1913 in Emden – 13 October 1996 in Hanover) was a German journalist and art collector. He became one of the most prominent journalists and magazine publishers in Germany.

His father was a police officer in Emden who was removed from his post by the NSDAP. After a one-year book dealer apprenticeship he studied the history of art at the University of Munich. In the 1930s he started working as a journalist. During the war he served in SS-Standarte Kurt Eggers, a propaganda unit in Italy. Being large, well-built and fair haired, he corresponded to the racial ideals of the time in Germany. This made him the speaker of the Olympic Oath during the 1936 event in Berlin – for Riefenstahl's film, but not in reality.^[1] Many years after the war, he confessed that "I knew what was happening ... but I was too cowardly to do something against it."^[1] He got back to journalism while working for the Hannoverschen Neusten Nachrichten, the daily newspaper Abendpost and the youth newspaper Zickzack.

He was the founder of Gruner + Jahr publishing house and the news magazine Der Stern. He led the magazine from 1948 to 1980 to become one of the strongest in Europe. Gruner + Jahr is the largest publisher in Europe as of 2014.

Nannen gained popularity as an art collector and benefactor of the Kunsthalle [de] in Emden, an art museum, that he built in 1983. The annual Henri Nannen Prizes are awarded in his honor by Gruner + Jahr. The Henri-Nannen-Schule (formerly Hamburger Journalistenschule), is the journalist school of Gruner + Jahr and is considered one of the best schools of journalism in Germany, along with the German School of Journalism (Deutsche Journalistenschule) in Munich.^[2]

He was married to Eske Nannen (born 1942), a former actress. Henri Nannen has a son Christian Nannen (born 1946),^[3] co-owner of Hamburg suitcase-producer Travelite.^[4]